No Good Deed
by Last Fading Smile
Summary: The Warden's personal insecurities and resentments create a rift in the aftermath of the dark ritual. Just a very short piece inspired by certain pieces of Morrigan dialogue.


She weeps in the night, when she thinks him asleep. And there are so many things to weep for. For her slain family, a blood offering on a devil's altar of malice and greed; for the comfortable life that she lost along with them, and the harsh one of hardship and horrors thrust upon her in its place; for the hardened warrior she was forced to become, far too young and full of hope to be crushed by a world so cynical and cruel. For the blood that she has shed on this twisted path she walks, or the demon blood that flows relentless through her own veins, killing her slowly with each wearing pulse. But what troubles her most is blood that is yet to flow, through the veins of a child she will never meet, never see, never know. His blood. His child. Conceived not in passion but though selfishness and greed, in dereliction of duty. Stolen. The witch had taken freely what she, from her tainted flesh and carrion womb, could never give him.

It is weeks since the Blight was ended. She traded in her armor for the shared burden of his crown, and was yet more guarded than ever. Where once he would gaze into her and see love's light reflecting on the glittering blue sea of her eyes, he sees how he has become merely a mirror for her regret, and how she cannot bear the sight and glances always away.

A Grey Warden must do whatever it takes to end the Blight. Even if it means laying down their life. The Archdemon demands a price meted out in blood, and she had refused to oblige; not in hers, not in his. But a toll needed still to be paid. One way or another.

The witch had asked him once, what would his choice be? Were he forced to make one, between ending the threat, and protecting his love. He had avoided the question, and the witch had been satisfied, knowing then that her scheme had already won. And then, when the time came, when they had been at their most vulnerable and desperate, had presented it under the guise of a friendship most vile, knowing that she would agree to it even though it pained her, knowing that she would convince him to accept even though it disgusted him. Convince. Manipulate. Twist him with a knife of guilt; use his love for her against him as both weapon and shield. It was the only way to be sure. Wasn't what they had worth preserving, and worth the sacrifice? Consider the alternative.

_Believe me when I say, you will not __**hate **__this as much as you believe…_

At first he had tried to joke about it. Brush it off, dismiss it. They both tried to ignore it, to carry on as if nothing had happened. But like any deep wound that went untreated, the guilt and the resentment in her began to fester and boil, infect and poison her thoughts. They say the heart remembers what the mind sooner forgets. But the mind is as much a traitor, ignoring what the heart knows to be true in favour of its own fantastical imaginings. She knows his heart as well as she knows her own, and yet she wonders, doesn't she, all the same? Wonders in the night where his mind might wander, where his thoughts truly lay when they lay together.

He tries every day to make her see that she is _all_ he sees, but in the night, in the dark, when she thinks she is alone, all those promises turn to ash and tears and she turns away, her side of their shared bed growing cold and an ocean of empty sheets opening up between them. He tries to cross that divide, to brave that cold and wrap her up in his embrace, to whisper his love into her ear and warm her, tries to draw the poison out. But how long could it go on like this before the toxin wormed its way into his stream and began to rot away at him as well, before it turned his sweet affection bitter? How long until he gave up on words that went seemingly unheeded, especially when it was she who had asked it of him to begin with? The only wrong he had committed was in loving her too much to let her go. But even the strongest bough can only bend so much before it breaks.

Love is a barbed arrow. It hits hard, and sudden, so suddenly one barely feels it sinking in, but try to pull it out and it will tear a jagged hole that will never rest from bleeding. The only remedy is to push, to see it all the way through, and hope the punctured heart will close the wound in time, and heal. Or else, to let it die.


End file.
